Snippet Saturday!

Snippet Saturday! A little something for the Piper Willow fans…

A heaviness settles over the table and Andella is no longer giggling. “Why did you do it, Piper Willow?”

“Andella!” her father hisses. He seems embarrassed for her, but she holds my stare across the wide table. I see nothing sinister, just simple curiosity in her eyes.

I reach for my blue-tinted glass and sip at the water. Gulping down air, I try on my best smile and elbow Rush slightly when I feel his gentle prodding at the locked gates of my mind.

“I can’t answer that. I mean…” I pause, allowing myself to reflect, “I guess I do know [why]. But I don’t know why I thought killing myself was the only option.” With a shrug, I sip more water.

Andella reclines slightly in her chair and nods. “Unlike my brother,” she shoots Rush a warm smile, “I have not traveled to your world, but I have seen into it. There is much sadness there. Such a loss of potential. I think you are different though. I think on some level, you must have known there was something else beyond your life. Did you not?”

I twirl the fabric napkin on my lap as I consider her question carefully. “I think I just wanted that life to be over.” I feel the tears building up in my eyes as my voice drops to just above a whisper, “Some people call it heaven, a better place after life. I didn’t care about Heaven or Hell, I just wanted out.”

A large hand reaches toward me and I look up through my blurred vision to find Andulen’s hand atop mine. Rush is also touching me, and though she’s clear across the table, I feel Andella’s calming presence as well.

“Child. You cannot fit your life into a square coffer. It will find a way to spill out over the sides and explore that which surrounds it. Even once that coffer is lidded, your life doesn’t cease to exist – you carry on. That is what you have done, Piper Willow. That is why you sit here with us this evening, eating and drinking and breathing. Your life – it will always struggle to stay outside that coffer. Do you understand this?”

I nod at Andulen and smile as he squeezes my hand before releasing it. My voice wouldn’t work even if I had words appropriate to use, so I sip from my tinted glass again.

“Now. I have serious matters to discuss about this Earth of yours. The first thing, a question I have had on my mind since my Son here breached the subject to me.” He pauses with his face set into a hard expression and I gulp. “Can you explain to me what Rugby is?”